Ordered My 'First Scope' !!

Glad you're excited Calibos. Boredom will soon set in though if we have to wait for clear skies. Yes, last night was super clear, but for me it was one in 8 which are not great odds when you're expecting a new toy!

It Arrived!!

Not a mark on the 3 packing boxes thanks to a concientious UPS delivery man who just bought a telescope himself last week and thus knew he had to be gentle.

All parts were present and accounted for and I took my time assembling to make sure I got everything right. Took about 2 hours taking it very slow. Could probably put another one together in about 30 minutes. It was very easy, but like I said I was taking it very slow this time.

When I opened the OTA box....OMG! Its huge!! It actually doesn't look as big once assembled. Going to collimate this evening and then tomorrow I'll align the finderscope. Obviously the New Telescope curse has hit big time and the weather forecast for the next week to 10 days is dreadful :roll:

I can't wait to get this behemoth outside for 'First Light'

I feel like a kid on Christmas Day opening his presents

We never grow up, do we?!!

It looks a beaut calibos, congratulations! May it bring you many happy nights observing.

Thanks Seanie!

My order of Accessories arrived from Telescope-Service today too. Same UPS delivery guy

Full set of Baader Hyperion EP's, Barlow, Telerad, Variable Polorizing Moon Filter, Broadband and Narrowband Filters, Laser Collimator and Inteliscope holster. The last two I didn't need as it turned out as they were bonus extras with the Scope order from Pptiek Van Grootven.

The sky was clear this evening though transparency was bad with a kind of thin mist from Horizon to horizon with a lot of Sky Glow in all directions. It was also blowing a gale.

Not a night for observing but what I did do was take the opportunity to properly star align the Finder Scope and install and align the Telerad. I had aligned the finderscope during the day from my living room by pointing at the RTE masts to my North West in the Dublin Mountains. Turns out that alignment was quite a bit off.

I also did the Telerad. What a great bit of kit that is!! I know they are great for starhopping especially if you don't have any kind of DSC but it'll even be great for aligning my Intelliscope DSC. ie. Now I can very quickly point at the guide star with the telerad rather than wasting any time scanning with the finderscope. Then move to the finderscope and find the star very close to the centre of the crosshairs. Fine tune scope pointing with the finderscope and then the object is guaranteed to be very near the centre of the FOV of the EP. Did this on mars and it worked a treat.

I did all this from my kitchen btw with the lights off and the patio doors open! Kept both me and the scope out of the gales.

Had a quick look at the Seven Sisters (Pleides) with my 21mm Hyperion with the 1.25in part taken off (2in 32mm EP effective) before it rose too high out of sight from inside my kitchen. I know from my old battered cheap Binoculars that the extra stars visible in the Bino's made the Seven sisters look like 'My Little Pony' Well 'My Little Pony' was gone. So many extra stars in my new scope made that Asterism disappear. ( Asterism are imaginary shapes aren't they?? )

Moved onto Mars. A bubbling boiling mess obviously enough given the current 200mph Jetstream and current weather. I did pop in the 3.5mm Hyperion which in my scope gives 428x just to see how big the disc would be. The odd split second where the turbulance would calm a little and I could start to see slightly clearer curvature gave me a good idea how big the disc would be at that mag. Ditto for some of the other Ep's. Nice to see what size the discs would be in the various EP's given significantly better seeing.

One thing that confused my though is that even at the highest mag, Mars was still a white disc. Even when I put in the polorizing filter and dialed down the light throughput, it was still white, just dimmer. Why no colour at all even if it was a boiling mess. Why did Mars stay white throughout?

Anyway, even though conditions were atrocious and this was really just a scope setup session rather than a real first Light session, it was thrilling nonetheless. Its actually made the wait for a calm clear night even more painful.

Oh one other thing re. collimation. I think I almost have it down pat. Secondary is nicely aligned with the focuser I think. Primary is almost Centre in the secondary. I can't get it dead centre but I can see the full Primary reflection with plenty of room to spare . With the laser collimator I have the dot almost in the middle of the Primary centre marker and with Primary collimated I have the lazer dot back in the hole in the viewport on the side of the lazer collimator. However when I look through the collimator cap with the little hole I can see the little hole in the middle of the primary marker. That is centred in the reflective underside of the colimmation cap. However that reflective underside of the cap is slightly off centre in the shadow of the secondary(black disc with the spider vanes). I think I can partially see some of the side walls of the drawtube (focusser tube??) Does this mean my focuser needs collimation too??

If that lot above is within tolerances then I am sorted as with all my practice yesterday and today, I think I have this collimation (especially with the lazer) lark beat. Can do it in a minute now. If however, what I have described above means I am doing something wrong, then I may have more learning and practice to do!!

Now those are great pictures. They really show the scale of the scope!

I hope you enjoy it for many years to come.

The colour of Mars through a scope can be fairly mild, like a salmon pink although I've never seen it as white to be honest.